Tolkien och Maskinen

by Björn Axén

To Tolkien, the machine is something far more menacing than a mere mechanical device. Fundamentally, it represents the lust for power – in particular, for power over others. The evil lord Sauron wants the one ring more than anything and is willing to stop at nothing to get it precisely because it will enable him to exert absolute control. The ring is machine par excellence, the device that will enable its possessor to establish absolute tyranny over every other living creature. It is not a means of liberation but a tool of coercion, domination, and enslavement. As the British historian Lord Acton would have warned, the power of the ring not only corrupts but corrupts absolutely.